Murder on the Midway

Campy Horror Play by Poll Fic

[murderonthemidway]

I never got to jump on the twitter choose your own adventure trend, I wanted to, I just never had a good enough idea when that was the hot thing to do. My first thought when tumblr got polls was 'hey you could do interactive fic with that!'

I started writing this for the Bare Bones jam and as an excuse to teach myself choicescript. Turns out, I hate choicescript.

I don't want to devote the time to moving it to twine (right now) but I also don't want to just let the last couple weeks work go to waste.

so we're all going to be fun and try

Murder on the Midway is a campy horror interactive novella (still being) written with games like Until Dawn, The Quarry, and Dark Pictures Anthology in mind.

You are a seasonal worker at the Amity Midway's haunted house and the decor just got a little more realistic... Solve murders, commit more, romance your coworker, romance the murderer, romance a detective, I'm not ur mom.

Some housekeeping

This is my homage to silly campy horror games; there will be blood, there will be body parts, there will be bad / dumb choices, reality will not always have bearing on the plot. We're just having fun.

Majority vote wins, but I reserve the right to call polls before they close. Sometimes 24 hours is too long, man. If it feels obvious what's gonna win and I don't want to wait... I won't.

Please don't be shitty if things don't go your way.

Things may slowdown as we go, but please know I am not a quitter, I want to give this a proper ending the most, I made it.

[murderonthemidway]

You take a moment to find the non-emergency number, call it, let it ring… and explain your situation; the dispatcher agrees, it does sound suspicious. Worrisome, even. She says she’ll send someone right away, but that still leaves you and Ashe waiting around and preforming crowd control for the next half-hour.

“Is that real blood?” The looky-lous at the tape ask the minute you turn around. They probably overheard the whole thing. Ashe didn’t make that big of a square.

Still, you shake your head. “We’re just retooling some things.”

“Didn’t you just call the cops?” A young woman asks with an incredulous fold of her arms.

You shrug. “We’re not supposed to have our phones out here with us.”

She rolls her eyes, but the longer you stand there, not explaining, the more obvious it becomes she won’t be getting an answer. One more scoff and eye roll and she—along with the rest of her entourage—leaves you and Ashe to your waiting.

“Holy shit.” It sounds like Ashe has been waiting to let that out.

“Yeah.” You agree. However this actually turns out… Yeah.

“Do you think we should check the rest of the haunt for like, more body parts or something?”

“No.” Maybe. But that was probably what the cops would do anyway. “That wouldn’t make sense. I thought we were supposed to shut the whole midway down… or else.”

“Do you think they meant us-us?”

You shake your head. No way. Maybe the Belroses were friendly with you, but not hey you should shut down the midway -friendly.

Ashe looks a shade extra conspiratorial,

"Do you think it's the ghosts?"

Absolutely not.

Maybe...

Oh, for sure.

Voting ended onNov 5, 2024

[murderonthemidway]

<<prev choice

“Oh, I read it.” But Ashe takes the note all the same and glances over it again. Her face scrunches up towards the end. “You really think it’s just a prank?”

You shrug. It’s kind of ridiculous if it isn’t. If whoever wanted to be taken seriously. Shut down or else what? And why not pin it on some place important? Like the front gate or the main office… Or just go right to the owners’ front door.

Ashe’s frown turns lopsided, like she’s disappointed in your answer, but then her eyes widen and she nods to the door frame again. “And what about that?”

With more than just your attention drawn to it, you hear gasps and murmurs from whoever had decided to stick around on the other side of the crime scene tape. Yeah, it was a baggy full of blood. You could have guessed that. You already did. That was easy to fake and, again, ridiculous.

The pair of ears though… You wish they looked just a little more plastic, but still. The 'Listen up!' bit and they do this? One way or another, that’s insane.

“Did you call anybody yet?” You ask Ashe.

She shakes her head. “I just dumped my stuff in my locker and started setting up, then I found it and I didn’t want anyone else touching it, you know, in case…”

You nod. That was probably smart. You shrug off your backpack and pull out your phone,

Who do you call?

The owners

The cops

Voting ended onNov 1, 2024

[murderonthemidway]

<<prev choice

You step a little closer to tear the note down from the door frame. The crisp white of the printer paper gives way to the bubble of red beneath it. You frown and begin to read,

[img description: Text generated in bright randomized colors and fonts, to say, Listen up! For too long this freak show has been like the bloated rotting corpse of a whale on our shoreline. Enough is enough. Shut down the Amity Midway or else!]

You look over to Ashe and...

“Pft.” You pass the note over for her to read. This can’t be real.

You are officially spooked now. Ashe takes the note from your hands...

Voting ended onOct 31, 2024

[murderonthemidway]

<<prev choice

Even if you are a little late, you’re not worried; The Amity Midway has been part of town and your life for… Well, as long as you can remember. The owners -- Beverly and Henry -- probably made it a point to know all the local kids, at least in passing. Local kids made for a good pool of employees. You especially; you went to school with their daughter, Ripley. You wouldn't exactly say the two of you are friends now — or ever were — but Bev and Hank know you. They like you. They'll understand.

Your bike breaks squeak as you pull up to the bike rack beside the midway's main entrance. There's a steady enough trickle of people walking in and out; tonight wont be dead, but it shouldn’t be anything crazy either. You walk your bike into the rack and chain it up, then head through the Amity Midway’s main entrance and right on back towards the haunted house.

There’s almost a crowd outside the haunt. Weird.

You jog up closer to the crowd and the front of the haunt. Usually you would keep on around to the back, but this was odd. Did everyone else show up late too?

“Hey!” The familiar voice of your fellow haunt worker and friend, Ashe, calls you away from the crowd. “You’re not going to believe this.”

You’re smiling before you even see her. Ashe always had a flair for the dramatic and it was easy to see why she wound up dragging you into this line of work. True crime, urban legends, conspiracy theories, even ghosts; Ashe was all about it.

“We got a ransom letter… kind of.” Ashe tugs you through the crowd, towards the haunt’s main entrance. The crime scene tape wasn’t real, but someone — you’re guessing Ashe — has roped off a square around the doorway. And nailed up there on the right, this supposed ransom note.

You can see the cutout letters as you stand up from ducking under the tape, though you can’t read it quite yet. And is that a plastic baggy pinned underneath it?

What do?

You grab the note and start to read it.

You ask Ashe, “Did you touch any of this, right?”

The note is whatever. WHAT is in that baggy?

Voting ended onOct 30, 2024

[murderonthemidway]

Murder on the Midway is a campy horror interactive novella (still being) written with games like Until Dawn, The Quarry, and Dark Pictures Anthology in mind.

You are a seasonal worker at the Amity Midway's haunted house and the decor just got a little more realistic... Solve murders, commit more, romance your coworker, romance the murderer, romance a detective, I'm not ur mom.

Some housekeeping

This is my homage to silly campy horror games; there will be blood, there will be body parts, there will be bad / dumb choices, reality will not always have bearing on the plot. We're just having fun.

Majority vote wins, but I reserve the right to call polls before they close. Sometimes 24 hours is too long, man. If it feels obvious what's gonna win and I don't want to wait... I won't.

Please don't be shitty if things don't go your way.

Things may slowdown as we go, but please know I am not a quitter, I want to give this a proper ending the most, I made it.

so with that out of the way...

It is not a crisp, fall evening.

The sun may be setting, but you could swear, the red haze of sunset was due to the intensity of the heat.

The breeze of forward motion as you pedal your way to the Amity Midway definitely helps, but it's been a warm October day and the boardwalk is always warmest just before the sun goes down. Lucky for you, that's when the annual haunted house opens its doors. Unfortunately, that's like, now. But it isn't a terribly long commute and you're already halfway there. You'll slip in just in time. Probably.

You're not worried though, because...

The owners like you.

The midway isn't exactly booming like it used to be.

It's /just/ a seasonal job at a haunted house.

No, you're stressed. You hate being late!

Voting ended onOct 29, 2024